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February 2012
A couple of years ago, the Air Force got the idea of acquiring a fleet of light air support (LAS) aircraft to use in low intensity conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan where operating conditions were relatively primitive and the air defense environment benign. The LAS could be provided to other
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Date:
2/29/2012
Maintaining the world’s best all-volunteer military is a very expensive proposition. People costs continue to rise as do the costs for military hardware. Each generation of equipment costs significantly more than the one that preceded it. This is not because of a broken acquisition system, although
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Date:
2/28/2012
The Obama Administration is forecasting that the Pentagon's purchasing power will decline by 22 percent between the recent peak year of 2010 and 2017 (the last year of the latest five-year spending plan). It is already clear that a disproportionate amount of the cuts will come in technology accounts,
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Date:
2/28/2012
One of the most interesting parts of the new U.S. defense strategy is the proposal to make up for capability gaps by more sharing and pooling of scarce assets. Resources are saved by managing critical assets as a pool from which allies can draw. Another way to reduce costs is to create common maintenance
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2/27/2012
On November 14, Defense News ran an interesting story by Asia correspondent Wendell Minnick about how the General Staff of China's People’s Liberation Army (PLA) manages cyber warfare activities. Minnick quoted Australian security expert Desmond Ball as speculating that the General Staff
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Date:
2/27/2012
It was supposed to be a temporary fix until the Future Combat System (FCS) was ready for deployment. In fact, the Stryker was initially called the “Interim Armored Vehicle.” It wasn’t even a new design. The Stryker is based on an existing vehicle, the Piranha, designed by the Swiss company MOAG
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2/24/2012
On February 21, I had the opportunity to give a talk about the defense budget and cyber security at the stunning new collaborative research center Northrop Grumman Information Systems is completing in Tysons Corner, Virginia. To say it is state-of-the-art is an understatement; the company has carefully
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Date:
2/24/2012
One of President Obama’s chief advisors recently made headlines with the claim that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy. This is a repetition of the administration’s Keynesian mantra we have heard for three years. The theory is that because unemployment benefits go to those with immediate
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Date:
2/23/2012
Sometime over the next several weeks, the Army will release the final request for proposals in an effort to replace its ill-fated Ground Mobile Radio. The radio was canceled last year due to price and performance problems, leaving a gaping hole in the service's plans for future battlefield communications.
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Date:
2/23/2012
In 2011, Congress and the White House entered into a Faustian bargain in order to satisfy the competing demands for raising the debt ceiling and deficit reduction. The Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 mandated some $900 billion of cuts over 10 years in exchange for an initial debt limit increase
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Date:
2/21/2012
Some security experts think that cyber attacks could be the biggest "asymmetrical" threat the joint force faces in this decade. America's military is now so dependent on information networks to accomplish missions that any adversary who can exploit, disrupt or destroy those networks poses a danger
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Date:
2/21/2012
The U.S. Army sees itself as the service that had to pay the price to get the job done in Iraq and Afghanistan, and rightly so. Ten years of air interdiction of the former and a rapid, air-dominated operation in the latter were not enough to achieve U.S. objectives. Nor was the initial combined
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Date:
2/17/2012
Military sources say that Iran has begun to harass the ground-based air defenses of the U.S. Army and allies in the Persian Gulf region using swarms of unmanned aircraft. The aircraft, which appear to be of Chinese design or origin, are typically launched to exploit the operating pattern of U.S.
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Date:
2/17/2012
The centerpiece of the Obama Administration’s new defense strategy is described as a “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific region. It is remarkable that one of the most significant strategic decisions of the past quarter century, the decision to abandon a two ocean, two war approach in favor of a concentration
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Date:
2/16/2012
On January 23, the Early Warning blog published a critique of Andrew Feinstein's book, The Shadow World: Inside The Global Arms Trade by retired Lockheed Martin Senior Vice President Robert H. Trice. Author Feinstein responds below with a rebuttal to the Trice critique.
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2/15/2012
An election year is a bad time to propose dramatic new national security policies. The Obama Administration has just submitted a fiscal year 2013 federal budget to Congress that the White House Chief of Staff admits has no chance of passage even in the Democratically-controlled Senate. The Pentagon’s
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Date:
2/15/2012
About the author: Glenn McCullough, Jr., is a former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, America’s largest public power company.
On February 9 the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission did something it has not done in 34 years: approve a license (two in fact) to build two advanced
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Date:
2/14/2012
Yesterday, the Obama Administration submitted its Fiscal Year 2013 federal budget that proposes spending $525 billion for the Pentagon plus another $88 billion on war costs. Overall, defense spending will decline by six percent relative to last year. More significantly, the FY 2013 budget marks
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Date:
2/14/2012
This is the week the Obama Administration releases its fiscal 2013 budget request. It's real big. In fact, it took the defense department 140 pages just to summarize its portion of the request -- which it is happy to do, since Pentagon policymakers have been highlighting the shift to new spending
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Date:
2/13/2012
Recent U.S. commentaries on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program have focused on its costs to the U.S. defense budget and its importance to our military services. What is missing from most of the current discussion is that the JSF is an international program. The United States is only one
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Date:
2/13/2012
Defense department officials and the chiefs of the military services have been reassuring anyone who will listen that the Pentagon has its act together when it comes to implementing the new defense strategy and creating a “leaner and more flexible” force structure. There will be cuts that are painful,
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Date:
2/10/2012
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2/9/2012
Among the world's major-league military players, there isn't much doubt which team dominates. It's Team America. But that doesn't mean everyone fares equally well when the team's budget request is released each February. This year, the Obama Administration will crown the U.S. Navy as most valuable
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Date:
2/9/2012
The 112th Congress has received the unfortunate, albeit partially correct, reputation as a “do-nothing” body. It is true that the 112th as passed fewer pieces of legislation than any other in history. This may not be a bad thing, particularly in light of all the controversial laws passed by its
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Date:
2/8/2012
International observers are somewhat mystified as to why India's air force selected the Dassault Rafale as its next fighter, committing billions of dollars to the purchase of 126 combat aircraft. The plane hasn't developed much of a market outside France, and India had other options including the far
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Date:
2/6/2012
Since the position of Undersecretary for Acquisition (to which was added Technology and Logistics to make it AT&L) was created some 25 years ago, ten individuals have served in this extremely important role. They have all been knowledgeable, experienced, thoughtful people. The current nominee, Mr. Frank
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Date:
2/6/2012
Since the release of the new defense strategy, much has been made of the shift to the Asia-Pacific region, its abandonment of the so-called two Major Theater Wars (MTWs) construct and the force structure reductions. The Administration will need to flesh out these ideas, explaining how it will implement
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Date:
2/3/2012
Washington insiders watch cable television every day, see a strong personality like President Barack Obama, and just assume things will stay the same and he will be re-elected. But the polls tell a different story. Obama's job approval rating has been underwater almost his entire presidency, and today
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Date:
2/3/2012
This year is shaping up to be the fourth in a row when defense stocks will perform better than anyone would have expected, given news of receding threats and another trillion-dollar federal budget deficit. Although Democratic administrations haven't been noted for their strong support of weapons programs
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Date:
2/2/2012
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta stunned everyone with his candid comment yesterday that the Administration was looking to dial down its role in Afghanistan to that of train and assist by 2013. However, coming on the heels of the White House’s decisions to withdraw the surge forces against the advice
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Date:
2/2/2012
Just when it looked like the rest of the world was beginning to wise up to China's subsidies-driven trade strategy, the Club for Growth has appeared on the scene with a recipe for keeping Beijing's mercantilist miracle in high gear. The Club wants America to unilaterally disarm its own exporters by
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Date:
2/1/2012
The authoritative and independent Congressional Budget Office has made it official: federal workers really are much more expensive than their civilian counterparts. In a report released on Monday, the CBO reported that “overall, the federal government paid 16% more in total compensation than it would
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Date:
2/1/2012